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[Zaibach333]

I had a chance to put those in this weekend, here's some snippets:

[xix]

This is looking really good, dude!

[Zaibach333]

So, internal things are going on, might be a while till a substantial update, but here's something that might be a thing for our resolution:
up until now we've been using 320x180, this test is in 400x225 which allows the use of a Unicode font and lower case letters.

*Scroll right to see the new resolution

[tinyDino]

Dude this project is super cool. Looking forward to future updates

[xix]

Zaibach! What's going on w/ the game?!

[Zaibach333]

Thanks for the reminder Xix

So, I haven't updated this thread in a while, what I can say is we've converted a lot of things for a new platform which is exciting.

Visually, we gained an artist who's task is to find a cleaner look for the game.

it can best be explained by this old clip from Nov. 2016



while it was at that point, there were no textures, and no colors, but it looked rather crisp.

So here's a test of a possible solution, void of much texture, but a heavy reliance on the shaders I've worked on



Not set in stone, and the trees might take a different approach. But this is what I can show for what we've been working on.

[xix]

Yeah dude this is looking real good. Could you try doing colored outlines instead of the hard blacks? Maybe they could be low value and saturated adjacent hues? Just a thought. It's looking real good though!

[Zaibach333]

brief update on visual where code is involved.
There's object hiding in the works, and a tip involving non linear motion in cameras and movements was put in effect. based on a curve.

many tweaks can be seen in this clip, like, it's using the new terrain, but mainly it's about the camera motion and object hiding.

[Zaibach333]

Haven't updated here in a while.

So, after playing much of the modern and classic influences I made some changes and in turn wound up diving into a lot of combat features.
New classes (and many removed and merged classes) as well as redefined or added coresponding skills and powers,
added backstab for the, now called, rogue class. which does a little more damage from the rear as well as applies the bleed effect.
poison, regen, and similar effects were actualized.
Embue Effect on weapons was added, this is to add poisons or other effects to your next weapon attack
steal item/gold is a thing
Fighters now have powers for 180 adjacent arcs, and full 360 whirlwinds
dual wielding skill was added, and is quite powerful,
Counter Attacks, powerful as well
defender fighter and archer UI and buffs and debuffs were created
made items function for status effects/removal
The arbitrary Time Units I've been using in the backend are now visible to the player as they move and activate powers/skills.
An essential time effect was added for delayed powers, like magic, which now casts after the character's initial turn, selecting the target can be done on tile or unit. This is currently being applied to more than magic, with the thought of charged shot archery powers.
Most of these are visible in this video, as well as some new assets from our artist.
It has a ways to go but content is still mostly editor work, just getting all the tools on the toolbelt ready as we move forward. and we've outlined much of the story elements outside of the prologue scenes (the only scenes on this thread)

[Zaibach333]

The archery abilities which I mentioned, (delayed and multi shots) were added.

also I found a huge performance boost, which was needed for our target platform, basically it was how my shader handled point lights, and the quality settings setting for number of simultaneous point lights for a given vertex was set to 4, it is now 1, looks basically the same in our case.

[Zaibach333]

Took an attempt at one of the harder to obtain classes, the Blade wizard.

The blade wizard has influence from the Final Fantasy Tactics magic blade attacks, though those were mid ranged and were cast like spells.

This blade wizard applies a spell to his next attack, similar to the rogue poisons, with the catch of no ranged, and blast effects will hurt allies (except for the caster)

the way it's written it will work for all future spells, it's a powerful class to be sure.

[Zaibach333]

Added the Paralysis effect, which can be imbued to an attack by a rogue. also here's another clip of a blade wizard, this time as a counter attack.

[Zaibach333]

Finally added a pretty key component, recruiting new units from shops, and a date system, (one dot movement on the map is one day) and there's a replenishment of new recruits at a given shop every 7 days.

[Zaibach333]

So I added horse mounts to the game, needs some work, and a little audio, but it's working out.  At the moment the concern is the size of the mount, since I don't have multi-square units I don't want the horse taking up too much of the neighboring models with overlap.  I'm open to suggestions on this one, or even a link to an article related to programming multi-square units on a grid...  Anyway, I think Mounts were needed, there's some scenes with wagons/carts and something had to be pulling those, here's a clip.

[Leopotam]

Zaibach333, what you think about flat colored style like this?



Should works much faster on mobile devices.

[Zaibach333]

y'know I have given that style a little thought, I really like that game too, made me think of how the models would look in my shader while I played.  Framerates are doing well for the most part, but less polys the better I suppose, the CPU spikes at the start of AI turns are the meaner part of frame issues.

I'll make some tests and see how that looks though.

Thanks for the input Leopotam

[Leopotam]

Zaibach333, if you need some help - feel free to write PM.

[Zaibach333]

So, not going to capture just how much we've been working on in this update, we've been busy though.

for a log:
improved performance,

sheered off some loading time which was actually just actors moving in the background by upping the timescale

applied some shader tricks like instancing, reduced point light ranges, (also tried light mapping but it wasn't much improvement for adding all those maps)

there was a lot of work done on audio, we aren't going to put the new music tracks in these videos at this time,

Flushing out of some key cutscenes has been done... also not putting that in at this time,

There's more tutorial to the start of the game, and setup of opponents as the player progresses early on has improved,

crazy amounts of bug fixes, some things like simply storing inaccurate amounts on the device for saves and what not



lastly, we've been working out a system for non-playable creatures to use non human rigs, although this example is similar, and I'm controlling the altered character, the frogman rig is much different, it can't equip the same gear, and has his own slew of animations, there's plans for demons, wolves, spiders, and the like with this research done.  We'll actually be a fantasy game haha.

[Devi Ever]

Really enjoying the look of this.  Like if Ultima or Baldur's Gate had continued to evolve.

[Zaibach333]

So things have been ramping up, and I can't show all of it... like music... some models... certain cutscenes... but I can show some major advancements to the core of battles.

I've added multi-tile creature support!  as well as a few new mechanics like flight.

furthering the custom rig system I mentioned last time, we've taken some more elaborate rigs into things,

Bare in mind, the bird and horse models are still default from where we purchased the animations, (with a few minor tweaks to get it to use our colors)
and it's not just 2x2 models, we support any size of model (well, with the assumption of a square), with stats for increased reach and movement capabilities, as well as deployment proofing to accommodate any overlaps

The flight mechanic specifically, is a mode, creatures using flight have these options:
*Take off for a movement of 2.5x the distance, and remain flying in place
*Land for a movement of 2.5x the distance, and stop flying in place
*Move still works, but you have 2.5x the distance if you're already flying
*Powers have a property for flight restrictions (flying/grounded/either)
*Taking damage removes flying status as well

One thing I'm finding is that multi-tile was not nearly as daunting of a task as I had originally figured, but I still wish I had incorporated it sooner, and preferably before I started on making the AI, the assumption that a tile can have an actor, or an actor has only one tile to be replaced with lists is quite an undertaking... but, it is working for the most part, and that makes it worth it.